Three big lessons I've learned about writing

So I've got a draft of the first novel done, and I've gotten some feedback from friends. It's been surprisingly positive. I say 'surprisingly' because writing the book was a slow and difficult writing process, and getting it above novella length has been a struggle. Being much more used to writing screenplays, I knew that there would be a learning curve, and that by the time I got to the final book I would know a lot more about writing, knowledge that I could then apply to revising the earlier volumes. (I'm not gonna think about publishing – self or otherwise – until I'm sure the books are as good as I can make them.)

Now I'm starting to write the second book, and I find it's flowing a lot better. Thinking about why that might be, and thinking about things that I and other people have written, has made me think about some lessons that I've learned about writing.

These are lessons I learned by doing. Some of this is stuff that I've always believed but couldn't articulate until now, and some of it is stuff that I learned only after making mistakes.

LESSON ONE: Your character needs to be active. He or she needs to have a goal, and be willing to do something to achieve it.

The biggest mistake that people seem to make when they first start writing is having a character who doesn't do anything, who is introverted, alienated, lonely, and passive.

Everybody does this when they start writing. Everybody. Even people who are proudly anti-art and anti-independent in their tastes, who never watch a movie with subtitled dialogue that isn't spoken in Klingon or Huttese, seem to want to write an Antonioni film on their first attempt. If they ever go to film school or take a writing class, and have to read or watch the equivalent efforts by their fellow students, they would probably discover how boring that is for the audience, and it might make them realize that their own version is probably just as bad.

Why do new writers tend to fall into this trap? I can think of two possible reasons. One is that, as a new writer, you are trying to Express Your Personal Self, and writing is an internal process anyway. So it just feels good to write a character who is caught up in his or her thoughts, cut off from the world.

The other, and much worse, reason is that they allow themselves to think that being weak and passive and doing nothing is somehow … deep. I'm not sure how this attitude caught on. Once upon a time, even punks and hippies and grungies wanted to actually do things and make things. But nowadays I notice that a lot of people – especially on the Internet – really can't identify with anyone who had a dream and put in the effort to make that dream come true.

Somehow the people who strive and aim high, and pick themselves up when they fall, are the villains that deserve scorn whenever they do even a single thing wrong … while the people who just sit back and do nothing but complain about everything have somehow convince themselves of their own superiority.

All I can say is that when I was first trying to teach myself to write screenplays, I tended to look at movies that I liked, and try to figure out how they work and what made me like them. I know that many other people have done that also, but it might be less common than I thought it was. How else to explain why people who take pride in only liking genre films – movies about characters who DO THINGS – keep wanting to write dramas about navel-gazers who are helpless and passive?

When people write, they reveal a lot about their own psychology. People who are unambitious, and see life as one big conspiracy against them that they can do nothing about, are unlikely to be able to lead a main character through the process of changing the world. The people who write one page of something, and then can't think of what happens next, are perhaps struggling to understand how a person might go about making things happen.

Sometimes I hear people say “Well, I want to write about character rather than plot.” But here's a secret: Plot is what reveals character. What your character does to achieve a goal, how s/he treats people, how s/he responds to challenges … those are the things that reveal character. Not just sitting around spouting monologues.

So if you're thinking about writing about a character who does nothing, try writing about a character who does something. If that's not true to who you are, then watch some movies or TV shows, or read some novels or comic books. See how fictional characters respond to stuff, and try to learn from that. Study some successful models and try to follow them. Get your character off the sofa, wipe the streaked mascara off her face, and send her out on a journey!

And just having your character do what other people tell him to do? Not quite enough. It's a step in the right direction, but it's not quite enough. Ever heard of the “refusal of the call”, that Joseph Campbell moment when the hero doesn't want to accept the mission he's been given, before eventually agreeing? Until now, I never thought about why that trope is there. But now I realize why it works: It shows the character actually doing something. By choosing the life that's familiar to him over the one that's being presented to him, he is taking a stand. And when he decides for himself that the mission is actually important and that he is willing to take the risk – often for personal reasons other than the ones initially presented to him – he is again taking a stand. Without this element, the character is merely a pawn.

I've certainly written – and even filmed – scripts about a character who is introverted and alienated, as a vessel for my own feelings at that particular stage of my life. So I can't be too smug about this. However, a trick I used to compensate was to surround my alienated protagonist with more assertive and colorful characters who get pulled into his or her orbit.

Which brings me to ...

LESSON TWO: Your character should have, or make, friends.

I'm calling this a “should” rather than a “needs to” because it's certainly possible to tell a decent story about someone who is alone on his or her journey. However, it's damn hard to do this well.

And why do you want to? When have you ever seen a movie that you liked, that did this? I guess it gets back to the “I'm alienated, no one understands me, so I'm going to write about loneliness” approach again, so I won't repeat points I've already made, except to add one thing: Stories with multiple characters are more interesting.

You know how a lot of people say that TV is now better than movies? Why might that be? One reason is that there's more time for big story arcs, but another reason is character. A modern TV drama tends to have an ensemble of characters, each of whom gets his or her moment in the sun, and viewers often have a particular character that they love (or hate).

An important thing about writing for an ensemble, rather than a solitary protagonist, is that you have to write characters who aren't you. Rather than just having a sullen loner who is meant to represent your own sad-sack viewpoint, you have to imagine characters who stand on their own merits as fictional creations, who have their own hopes and dreams and quirks and strengths and weaknesses.

Maybe it's just me, but I always liked movies where there was a gang. I always liked it when there were a lot of characters with different abilities or personalities. You know, obscure arthouse fare like Star Wars and Aliens and, I don't know, The Goonies.

Having a gang means that your characters can talk to each other about the plot. When something happens, they can all have different reactions. The brave one, the fearful one, the smart one, the naïve one, all can have different perspectives on the action. Also, you can split them up and send them off on different subplots. This might be a challenge if you have difficulty coming up with one plot, let alone two or more, but that's part of why you should try it.

What can I say … As a writer, I guess I've always found the Wizard of Oz template more appealing than the Eraserhead template. Even though I like both of those movies.

LESSON THREE: Having a story is more important than having themes or a message.

You might be expecting me to drop the Sam Goldwyn quote “If you want to send a message, call Western Union,” but I personally think that's too cynical and discouraging. Film and literature are certainly capable of having something to say.

I prefer a quote from Orson Welles, who said that “most movie messages … could be written on the head of a pin.” I take that to mean: you can put a message in a movie if you want to, but it won't actually amount to that much. It won't be as important and earth-shattering as you think it will.

There certainly have been moments when it seemed like movies could change the world. The late 60s/early 70s has been widely hailed as such a period. I would argue that the late 80s through the 90s – an indie-friendly period stretching from Blue Velvet and Do the Right Thing all the way up to Fight Club – was another one.

I'm not sure we're living in a time like that right now. Maybe once upon a time it was oh-so-shocking if a movie made a political statement or criticized something about our society. But now we have blogs, talk radio, and entire cable TV channels devoted to decrying how much worse things have become since … well, since the last time people said how much worse things have become.

With indie cinema seeming to become ever more marginalized by franchise Goliaths, I don't really like to discourage anyone from consciously putting a personal philosophy or political viewpoint in their scripts. However, I'm not sure any philosophy is likely to be compelling enough to compensate for the lack of a decent story.

First of all, with all the chattering going on out there on the Internet, the chance that you genuinely have an absolutely unprecedented opinion about something is somewhat low. If you think you do, then by all means go for it. But you can't just (to paraphrase Team America) read the news and then repeat it like it was your own opinion.

And usually what people have to “say” is grouchy and negative. Every once in a while we get an Amelie or a Ferris Bueller's Day Off or something that tries to convey a positive philosophy, but usually we get A Hard Hitting Satire rooted in anger. To some degree that's the rebellious spirit of youth and/or art … but man, we are so knee-deep in that toxic negativity now. It used to be a brave thing to create art that challenged the status quo, but that hostility is now so omnipresent that it has become the status quo.

For me the absolute worst is when people write a script or make a film that merely exists to criticize something ephemeral ... like a particular politician or celebrity who's going to be out of the limelight before you know it anyway, or a current pop-culture trend that you find annoying (often for no better reason than that it differs from the pop-culture of your own childhood). When I see something like that, I tend to think: Come on, dude. You had a chance to make something cool. You could have been part of the solution. Instead you gave the problem free publicity.

I guess it's easy for me to say all this stuff now that I'm more experienced. I've done much of the above, and have now gotten it (largely) out of my system. Maybe people need to do it wrong first, not just for practice but because you need to get those things off your chest somehow. But what motivated me to write all this up was encountering a lot of scripts recently that are about self-absorbed inaction.

Two decades ago, indie filmmaker Hal Hartley complained about the “empty formal posturing” of suburban film students trying to make urban gangster films. He said that, instead, they “should be writing stories about sitting on their couch watching gangster films.” But since then, we've gone so far in that direction. We've had so many Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino wannabes who've embraced the “dude, we can make a whole movie just about guys in one place talking” aesthetic of both directors' debut films without demonstrating the wit or cleverness of either. Spouting opinions has become a substitute for actually doing anything or having any ambition.

So I think a little of the “formal posturing” that Hartley complained about 20 years ago – understanding how drama and storytelling and genres work, rather than just snobbily rejecting them or nerdily critiquing them – would go a long way toward making off-Hollywood scripts and movies better.

And novels, too. Speaking of which, time to get back to work ...

Quit your griping and start your typing: Or, the future of art and storytelling and stuff

As both an independent filmmaker and a punster, it's tempting to refer to the recent July 4th holiday as Independent's Day. But this year, for me at least, the label fits.

As I've mentioned before, I often attend events at Visual Studies Workshop, particularly their screenings of old 16mm short films. Their most recent screening was July 5, and had an Independence Day theme.

I'd been in kind of a creative rut recently. I still wanted to complete the books I was trying to write, but I was wondering if my heart was still in it, or what I would do with these books when they were done. I still considered myself a filmmaker at heart, but the complexities of low-budget moviemaking are not to be treated lightly and I wasn't sure if I was quite ready yet to re-enter those waters.

Anyway, at the VSW event, I inquired about a two-day course they'd announced for that weekend called “Performing Books”. I wasn't sure what this course was about, but it seemed to have something to do with combining elements of literature with elements of film/video and live performance. It seemed like it might offer a way to bridge these two worlds in which I was trying to rekindle my interest.

I hadn't had a weekend completely to myself in a long while, and I was looking forward to spending the holiday weekend catching up on things and trying to get back into my writing. I wasn't sure I wanted to give up 16 of those hours. But my gut feeling was that I should take this course.

And I'm glad I did, because it rekindled my creativity. The teacher, Tate Shaw, showed some different types of unconventional books that artists have made, and also showed some videos of various artists who had combined live readings with multimedia. A few of these were by people I knew of – Marina Abramović (the subject of The Artist Is Present, a documentary that was shown at the local High Falls Film Festival), Laurie Andersen, and of course Crispin Glover – while others were new to me.

I didn't “get” absolutely all of the work being shown, and some of it was the kind of stuff that my college-age self would have sneered at as pretentious and boring. But years after college ended, as a working adult studying this stuff by choice, I now appreciate why less accessible forms of art exist. The whole point of it is to challenge you, to make you think, to see things from a different angle. Even if you don't “like” it, it's good for you in a way. And it made me excited about my own work again, because it caused me to think of new ideas and new approaches.

The timing of this class was perfect. It was a case of one door opening when another closed.

Because some time earlier that week, I happened to vist the sci-fi website io9 for some reason. I have a love-hate relationship with that website – there's some fun and interesting stuff there, including science news and some good articles about writing ... but also some snarky junk, especially in the user comments. Anyway, one of the headlines was “When is the right time to finally give up on a series?”

My patience with nerd negativity had been declining for several years now, but against my better judgment I clicked on this link. As someone who was trying to write a book series, I thought I might get some insight into what elements make a series work, and what mistakes cause the audience to lose interest.

But when I read the page, I saw no insights into the art or craft of storytelling, or appreciation for the challenges of doing it well. All I saw was one fan grievance after another, as nerd after angry nerd listed a series they hated and the moment they gave up on it, and how as a result they now hated Stephen King or Orson Scott Card or whoever.

The one halfway thoughtful comment I saw was from someone named Rob Bricken, writing under the handle of Superman villain “mxyzptlk”:

“Maybe a better question is why we persist in keeping up with stories that have long ago made us question "Why am I keeping up with this?" ... maybe completism is a geek flaw — we're continuously drawn back to a flawed storylines [sic] because they tap into our weakness for identifying flaws, and that coupled with our completist tendencies make for craptastic bait we have a harder time ignoring than taking.”

I would have liked to take that observation as something constructive – that fans have the perfectionist mind of an engineer or programmer, and have an instinct for spotting bugs. More cynically, though, it seemed to indicate that these people just like to complain and criticize.

And that was the moment when I finally realized that this was not the audience I wanted to reach out to. This was not the community I wanted to be part of. Not when there are other communities of artists and DIY-ers and even some 'normal' people with minds more open than they get credit for.

Prior to that, I'd been thinking about why I originally wanted to make movies, and why I was so passionate about science fiction and fantasy when I was younger. Cinema was something that entertained and excited people ... and if it didn't, that just inspired the restless and creative souls to want to create their own original visions and put them on screen. At the same time, the sci-fi fan community seemed to be a haven of smart and friendly people in an otherwise brutish world.

But something seems to have gone sour. It's weird because I don't think fans have ever had it better. The biggest TV shows in the world right now seem to be Doctor Who and Game of Thrones, and maybe Sherlock. Every halfway decent drama on TV nowadays, genre or otherwise, has gone the Lost / Babylon 5 route of epic story arcs that span multiple seasons. Every tentpole studio movie seems to be based on an established franchise and marketed to the Comic-Con audience.

So I don't completely get where this growing anger is coming from. However, I do get the sense that Hollywood isn't liked right now. The studios seem to be putting more and more eggs into fewer and fewer baskets, trying to please everyone and instead pleasing no one. Their losing strategy in the last couple years has been as follows:

• Instead of ever making an original movie, just buy an obscure property whose core audience is very small, but also very vocal and determined to create bad publicity
• Hire an auteur director who will want to put his own original stamp on the property, thus alienating the aforementioned core audience
• Spend so much money on the film that it will have to be an all-time blockbuster just to break even
• Produce a really generic marketing campaign that doesn't tell you what the story or premise is, or why you should see the film, instead relying on the obscure brand to sell itself
• Generate nothing but apathy or hostility from the fans (who don't like auteurs), the critics (who don't want to see an auteur wasting his talents on a remake of something), and the general public (who don't know what this thing is or why they should care)

A similar formula admittedly worked for the Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean movies, but recent attempts to duplicate those successes have grown ever more futile.

There also might be a class resentment of some kind. I never fully appreciated how deeply Hollywood directors and actors are hated right now until the recent backlash against Zach Braff. If you somehow haven't heard, the former sitcom actor recently decided to fund a follow-up to his cult film Garden State by raising money from fans on the Internet (“crowdfunding” as da kidz call it nowadays). From the bitter backlash he received in some quarters, you'd think Braff was some pampered Tudor who bathed in a diamond-encrusted bathtub full of champagne and baby seals' blood, while raping orphaned migrant workers at the same time.

Most of the criticism of Braff I've seen essentially boils down to “Braff is in the Hollywood system, and therefore all-powerful and evil! He already has all the power and influence required to get a movie green-lighted and distributed by the studios!”

A cooler, calmer head might point out that if Steven freaking Spielberg has trouble making the movies he wants (his recent Lincoln apparently came within a hair's breadth of being made for cable TV instead), then maybe creative clout isn't that easy to come by in the studio system anymore. Nearly every name director who's been a major influence in my lifetime, from Steven Spielberg and George Lucas to David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderberg and Kevin Smith, has been in the press recently bemoaning the difficulty of getting their movies made and/or announcing their imminent or eventual retirement from filmmaking.

In the midst of all this chaos and frustration, maybe it's time to ask: If Hollywood cinema is really that much of a dinosaur, then why are we still so obsessed with it anyway? We have video cameras, which are better than ever. We have computers. We have the Internet. What's wrong with just making something on a smaller scale, something you truly believe in, instead of trying to compete with the Goliaths? Do you just want to complain, or do you want to be part of the solution?

I can think of at least one person out there who might have the answer. There's a website called CrochetMe.com which, about five years ago, discussed the DIY movement and online distribution with a guy who crochets but also makes web videos. Here's something the guy said:

“I mean, let's face it, in the media there are now eight companies. ... Everything is becoming consolidated, so where there used to be lots of variety, there are now, like, ten giants and tons of tiny little villagers. And yeah, the villagers are going to start making their own stuff because the materials will be available to all of them, and we can't all just do things the way the giants want, because it does seep something out of your soul. I think it's absolutely true on every level of art that this is the worst of times and, like some guy might have said once, the best of times. ... we are now in a situation where everybody can do what they do. ... I will always give them credit for trying to find a way to steal Christmas, but this time they might not be able to. There's always been an independent side to the industry. And for this particular medium, I think it's going to be a lot harder for them to crush it.  .

“[A]t the end of the day right now, you can create something; what you can't usually do is make a fortune off of it. But ... it's not about, "... I'm going to be [a] millionaire without enjoying the process and the product." Ultimately, the artistic expression can't be squelched; it's just they'll try to cut off any avenues for that expression to be, shall we say, monetized in a realistic fashion. Like I'm saying, the sort of people who understand the DIY mentality are more about the doing than the having. So I think that ultimately, my advice is what my advice always is: Make stuff. ... Right now, because of digital technology, you can make crafty little movies, you can make crafty little things that go up for millions of people to see. ... It is no longer the time of sitting around and thinking about doing something.”

It's been five years since the guy gave that interview, and he's since been busy making other stuff but he probably still feels the same. And it seems to me that if that guy wants to crochet and do web videos as well as make Hollywood blockbusters ... and if Crispin Glover wants be a spoken word artist in between Hollywood comedies ... and if Zach Braff wants to crowdfund an indie film … and if George Lucas wants to retire and make experimental films in his garage … and if Ethan Hawke wants to do whatever it is he does … then what the hell is stopping the rest of us?

So I think the smart people are gonna be the ones who stop bellyaching about what Hollywood does, and how mainstream pop culture does this and doesn't do that, and are willing to embrace new technologies and new opportunities, and actually show people how it should be done.

And it doesn't even have to be a traditional movie. That used to be the dream – make a full-length movie and show it in a conventional theater to a live audience. But if that medium is dying (as it seems to be), there are other ways of telling a story. You can make a web series. You can write books. You can be like the folks I learned about last weekend, and find ways to combine existing media into something new.

I think J to the W was right. These are the worst of times and, “like some guy might have said once,” the best of times.

Learning from Kevin Smith

Well, Saberfrog is finally for sale at my website. I also need to somehow put the movie online for sale somewhere, and also send out review screeners. All of which I probably should have done ages ago, but I have a job and other things to do with my time, which to me are major obstacles to being any kind of social-media butterfly.

You've certainly heard by now about the new Star Wars movies that have been announced. There's nothing I can say about this that hasn't been well-said by online critic Outlaw Vern (and, in the comments below, by his fellow Ain't It Cool alum Mr. Majestyk). For better or worse, people now have even more reason to keep voicing their thoughts about Star Wars. The unending kvetching about that franchise and its creator gets me down sometimes, because I think artists should be allowed to take risks and make unexpected choices, even if the results are variable.

But people are possessive about Star Wars in a way that they aren't about anything else. Also, in the age of the Internet there's not really consensus anymore – while some people have greater access to the media or go to greater lengths to make their viewpoint known, almost nothing is universally loved or hated. As Kevin Smith once observed, every movie is someone's favorite movie.

Speaking of whom, a friend and I went to see Kevin Smith perform in Buffalo a few weeks ago. By chance, I got to ask him the first question of the evening. I asked him about an interview he'd given a while back, in which he said that he was tired of the online negativity he'd endured – not only criticisms of his work, but personal attacks on himself and his family.

I asked him how, in the face of such negativity, he maintained his faith that there might still be an audience out there who was receptive to his work.

Smith said that, at age 42, he'd learned to overcome his fear. He talked about how, when he was younger, he was always afraid of getting in trouble, but now he realized that there was little as an adult that he would do that would genuinely get him in trouble. He recited a quote he'd learned: “Worry is interest paid in advance on a debt that never comes due.”

More than once over the years, Smith has expressed the philosophy that he creates things and sends them out in the world, to find out if anyone else gets it. That approach has worked for him. One might argue that Smith's career began at a time when people were less obsessed with franchises and more hungry for individual, personal versions. Over the years, though, Smith has nurtured an audience and developed his own brand, so he's in a position to be able to create more personal work secure in the knowledge that there would be at least some audience for it.

That's the challenge facing most artists these days.

Before I set out on my Saberfrog tour, I was asked “What did you learn about yourself making this movie?” I didn't have a good answer to that, but I did learn some important things from the trip itself.

You have to know where your audience is, and how to reach them. That's the lesson I've learned from making Saberfrog.

When I was developing the movie, I was proud of the fact that it was a hybrid of genres, and that it represented a particular viewpoint on the world.

But how do you market that, when there are so many entertainment options that the only way for a consumer to filter it all is to limit yourself to the stuff you know you'll like?

You have to be a salesman. You have to make yourself and your project seem appealing to people. That's another lesson I've learned.

During my traveling showings of Saberfrog, I interviewed some people that I met in the different cities that I went to, asking their thoughts about why we make art and why it is important. I did this so that I would have something to show for my travels in case the screenings weren't well-attended, and also because I myself was seeking answers to these questions.

I showed a rough assembly of this interview footage at a Buffalo Movie-Video Makers meeting, and one attendee said that this was a measure of how “pure” I was as an artist – that this was what I chose to do to promote my movie, rather than thinking like a businessman. He didn't seem to mean it as a criticism, exactly, but it was a valid point.

Because I'm an introvert at heart (or because I grew up in a world where caring about something other than sports was kind of frowned upon), I'm still getting used to the idea of being able to share my creative passions with other people. My nourishment was more solitary – it came from books and obscure films and foreign TV shows, all of which seemed to come from a better world than my own, where people were smarter and more inventive and more thoughtful. There wasn't a social connection between artist and fan, only a philosophical one. So I'm still adapting to the idea that art is not solely a means of personal expression, but of communication. And not just artist-to-audience communication, but interaction.

Obviously the film scene has changed unrecognizably in recent years. This article has really rammed home, more than anything else I've heard lately, how film as we knew it really is on its way out – and that well-known, widely released films that came out when I was in college are already becoming unshowable in their original format.

We're only going to have digital copies of varying quality (depending on how much money gets devoted to transferring them) that may not even last very long. For lower-budget filmmakers like myself, obviously a DVD or Blu-ray is going to be the public screening format of choice most of the time. But to go to a public screening of a Hollywood movie (including ones that aren't even 20 years old) and basically be watching them on a big-screen TV … what is the point? If it's basically what you could watch on your entertainment center at home, why go to a theater?

To have a group experience, that's why. That's the one thing that still matters. Having something to share, and talk about, with other people.

That's what it's all about.

IFP conference, Day 2

In yesterday's post on IFP's annual filmmaking conference, I neglected to mention that Troma legend Lloyd Kaufman was in the audience. At first I thought maybe he was seeking some wisdom like the rest of us, but of course he was present because his wife Pat Sweeney was a panelist. Sorry for the omission. Yet it seems fitting to bring up Lloyd Kaufman at this point, since the first panel of day 2 had another known genre filmmaker, Larry Fessenden, as a panelist.

DAY 2: September 19

The first panel, featuring Fessenden as well as producer/author Jon Reiss (Think Outside the Box Office), was about producing. Reiss said that you should think about marketing and distribution from the very inception of your project. Don't tailor the film to an audience, but think about who is the audience for your film and what are your goals: To change the world? To find a large audience? To change your career?

Although the panelists had practical talk about producing, they maintained an emphasis on artistic integrity. Reiss stressed the importance of knowing who the audience for your film is and figuring out how to reach it. Panelist Mike Ryan of Greyshack Films said that for his recent female-centric Western, Meek's Cutoff, he had to tell the investors how the movie would make its money back, and he said that “every woman who listens to NPR will see this.” The panelists also cited the recent film Note by Note, about the making of a Steinway piano, which appealed not only to piano fans but furniture makers. Fessenden discussed a film he made about a chef who seeks revenge against a critic, which didn't quite fit the horror genre but was enjoyed by “foodies”.

“Cinema is about communication,” said Fessenden. “Marketing is about supporting that communication. You can't make an alternative-minded film and then market it aggressively without a sensitivity to what that film is about.”

The panelists, particularly Reiss, also stressed the importance of setting aside money and resources for marketing and distribution. “I say half [of the budget] to get people thinking about this,” said Reiss. He also emphasized the importance of commitment: “If you're in this business to make money, I suggest you have better things to do with your week than be here ... You need to be passionate.” He described the long odds of getting into Sundance, where about 3000 feature films are submitted every year, only 200 actually get in, and only about 40 get distribution deals. (“And they're not good deals,” added Ryan.)

Reiss has coined the term “PDM” (producer of distribution and marketing) as a new crew position that low-budget films should have. His view is that filmmakers – who aren't always socially adept – should concentrate on making films, and leave the outreach to a PDM. He also suggested that a film about a particular subject to reach out to fans of that particular subject, not just a filmgoing audience.

The subject of four-walling (renting a theater and collecting all the income yourself) came up. Reiss said that each film has different needs, and that these days you should think beyond movie theaters. Fessenden said he preferred to split the box office with the theater owners rather than rent the theater. Fessenden also referred to reviews, newspaper articles, and the blogosphere as “free advertising.”

The next panel was specifically about self-promotion, and featured publicist Sheri Candler, publicist Adam Kersh, filmmaker Ava Duvernay, and IFC's Ryan Werner. Candler's advice was that “Self promotion is about helping other people ... Many filmmakers are shy and don't want to gladhand. Give your audience things they're interested in ... Be someone they want to talk to. Spend less time talking about yourself and more on what you think they'll be interested in.” Duvernay had similar advice: “Your pitch is for your film, not yourself. You're nothing without your film … Your pitch needs to be less about 'me and my friends made this' but what it's about, who the audience is, why it's important.”

Kersh and Werner recommended hiring a publicist, and to do so as early as possible, although Candler said that at a smaller festival the filmmaker could be his/her own publicist. At this point, visible tension arose between Werner, who stressed the need to debut your film in a major festival like Sundance in order to get noticed; and Candler, who pointed out that not every filmmaker would be able to do so.

Candler's advice was that you need an audience before you get money. Know your goal, whether it's to get industry attention, or to change the world, or get the film seen (which may not mean money). That helps you figure out your audience and how to market/distribute them. At the script stage, bear in mind who will love your film and how to find them. She also warned against selling all of your rights to a distributor, so that you can still sell copies of the movie yourself.

The next panel was by “distribution strategist” Peter Broderick, who repeated themes introduced by Reiss and Candler: Know your goal, whether it's to make money back, to make another film, to entertain, to open a dialogue with others, to build a fanbase, to educate and motivate, etc. and to know which goals are primary, secondary and tertiary. Getting the film seen or getting top-tier premiere are not goals, just means to an end. He defined the three main reasons to make an indie film as: Maximize revenue, maximize career, change the world. He added that there's only one reason to be an indie filmmaker today: “because you can't help yourself.”

Broderick also said that filmmakers should not try to do everything themselves, and should have a distribution team as well as a production team. He discussed crowdfunding, and said that the building of an audience was more important than the fundraising.

Next was a case study about the distribution of Kevin Smith's new film Red State. As you may know, Smith chose to self-distribute the film rather than sell the rights to a distributor; he controversially announced a plan to auction the distribution rights at a Sundance event, only to declare that he would be doing it himself (look on YouTube for video of that event). David Dinerstein, representing the film on this panel, said that if there'd been a distributor who really wanted the movie, they would have heard about it before this event.

The release of Red State began with screenings at 15 venues in the U.S. and another 5 in Canada, each with a ticket price of $60-$100 but hosted by Smith in person. (I almost went to the one in Toronto, and a DVD was to be included in the ticket price.) The film earned $1.1 million from these shows alone. The film was then released on VOD, followed by another screening (40 theaters showing the film simultaneously) where Smith responded to audience questions sent by Twitter. (I attended the Rochester screening on Sunday.)

A panel about music seemed to consist largely of the high-powered panelists (including composer George S. Clinton) telling war stories about the 60s and about famous people they've worked with, but ended with the advice that, to get music for your indie film, you should give a struggling local musician a chance instead of buying music from a library.

The day concluded with a panel featuring Sundance's Keri Putnam and Tribeca Enterprises' Geoffrey Gilmore. They discussed the changing role of film festivals, which Gilmore criticized for having “too many people with this color hair”, pointing to his own graying head. He said the future would be in new narrative forms, such as games. He recommended reading the Future of Film blog on Tribeca's website.

Even by this second day I was noticing certain themes repeating in the panels, but it was useful and informative nonetheless. Later that evening was a book launch for Sheri Candler's book Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul, which is available as a free download until the end of this month.

NEXT TIME: panels on how to pitch and how to get an agent, plus a crazy movie I saw a preview of.

IFP conference, Day 1

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the first public screening of Saberfrog. I could have blogged something about that, but instead I spent yesterday evening at the Little Theater for a public showing of Red State, followed by a streamed Q&A with its writer-director, Kevin Smith.

Smith's famously rambling, anecdotal style meant that he only managed to answer about five actual questions, but along the way he offered some inspiring pearls of wisdom. Smith claimed that he had “no discernable talent” and that his film career resulted from “will over skill”. He also made the inspirational statements that “Failure is just success training” and “There's no such thing as incorrect self-expression.” He was eagerly trying to encourage the audience to do what he did and make their own films, and their own art, even in the face of nay-sayers.

It seemed a fitting way to end a week spent in New York City attending IFP's annual independent filmmaking conference. There were five days of panels and I took tons of notes each day, which I'll try to recap in this blog each day this week. I had a good time and learned a lot, so I figure I might as well share the knowledge.

DAY 1: Sunday, September 18

While most panels were roundtable discussions of current topics, some took the form of conversations with particular individuals about their own work within the filmmaking community. Sunday began with a talk with Micah Green and Dan Stineman, from the film finance department of the famous talent agency CAA. They discussed the recent Toronto International Film Festival, which is one of the primary film markets next to Cannes and Sundance. They defined “independent” as a film not owned or controlled by a studio at any point from development to distribution. They discussed alternate financing models that were emerging, in which studios invest in films that have indie financing, since studio executives do want to make authored, visionary films even if their corporate structure doesn't normally encourage it.

Green took the view that “independent” was a financing concept (which Stineman slightly disputed) and said that there's a danger in assuming that a film made in a certain way was automatically better. His advice was to recognize the market, and create your project in a way that is informed by the market; it's okay to just do art for art's sake as long as your financiers (who may be you) understand that. It's irresponsible not to look at the market and be working at a budget level that's realistic for that. He described the recent trend in “microbudgeting” – films made in the low 6 figures or even 5 figures – which is a way to make a movie without established stars or genre. Examples he cited included the Duplass brothers, who didn't want to spend three years chasing investors, and would rather make a movie on their own terms even if it had lower aesthetic quality; and Lynn Shelton, who made a low-6-figures movie that sold at Toronto.

They stated that the greatest successes at Sundance have been in the low-6-figure budget range, including The Brothers McMullen, Napoleon Dynamite, Super Size Me, El Mariachi, and Pi. Bigger budget Sundance hits like The Kids Are Alright and Little Miss Sunshine are the exception; the latter was almost was developed in the studio system.

They also stressed the importance of having something to attract distributors and audiences, such as stars or perhaps a known director. To anyone trying to start their directing career, they suggested microbudgeting, but said that the challenge of this is finding money from friends and family, and then figuring out how to convince actors and/or foreign buyers. A film by a first-timer won't get investors without a producer (such as Christine Vachon or Ted Hope) who's made similar films that were commercial and successful; “don't even think of approaching financing until you've done that.” The next step is to get at least one star to bet on you.

The panelists said that your budget should be right for what you're doing; if you're trying to launch your directing career, you should be pursuing friends and family, not bigger sources, for money. They again said to consider microbudgeting, making a film that costs $2000 or $5000 or $10,000, to show your ability to direct actors and move the camera; this can then be used as a “calling card: for future projects.

During the Q&A, they stressed the importance of having a good pitch in order to stand out from the crowd. They said your first movie should be affordable, and before approaching them you need to get a producer with a track record who can express his/her belief in you.

The next panel was on crowdfunding, the process of soliciting numerous small donations to your project through venues such as IndieGoGo and Kickstarter. I was interested to notice that one of the panelists was Jennifer Fox, who I recognized from a late-80s indie-film documentary To Heck With Hollywood! that I saw in college. (That film profiled several aspiring indie filmmakers and their then-recent projects; Ms Fox had a documentary called Beirut: The Last Home Movie.) Fox admitted that she didn't enjoy the crowdfunding process or the self-promotion it required; inviting thousands of people into her project was “scary”, but she realized she was inviting them into an exchange, giving people the chance to be part of a creative endeavor.

Panelist Steven Beer pointed out some pitfalls. He said if you're sloppy you can incur tax liability. His advice was to understand that crowdfunding is a gift, a no-strings-attached grant, and that the people who give should have no expectation of return on investment, except maybe a T-shirt, a DVD, or a visit to the set. He said to be upfront and don't give the impression that they'll make money if you make money. He also said that the money raised from crowdfunding should not be taxable income, and that you should raise money through a company (which has the screenplay rights), not as an individual.

Fox said that crowdfunding works when you can really target your audience and find a segment willing to give money; her father-son film My Reincarnation targeted a Buddhist market, for example. She also said “you have to make sure your film has people that will look for money for you.” She pointed out that with Kickstarter you lose all money raised if you don't meet your goal, but that this can encourage people to give, and to help you meet your goal in the final days of your campaign.

The panelists discussed the time and effort involved in a crowdfunding campaign. Filmmaker Rodney Evans said he worked 5 hours a day for 30 days on a recent crowdfunding campaign. He said Kickstarter has a “project update” feature that let him update his blog; Fox said she regularly put up new videos, wrote seven articles for IndieWire, and wrote 50 pages worth of updates.

At the end of the panel, I asked Fox whether one should use multiple crowdfunding platforms or stick to one. She said stick to one, because it would be too much work to do several at once.

A later panel had the theme “Making Your First Feature”. As a case study, they used the recent film Kinyarwanda, a $250,000 feature about genocide in Rwanda, with the filmmakers present to discuss the production. I didn't feel I needed this panel as much, but director Alrick Brown – a teacher at NYU and Rutgers – was full of inspirational quotes: “I'm sorry of hearing filmmakers say 'I can't.' The question is how.” “We artists get cocky and think that because we made something people will go. You have to build your audience. Making the movie is only half the battle.” He stressed the importance of figuring out the script ahead of time; quoting Helen Keller, he said that pencil and paper are cheap and patient, but people aren't.

Brown's closing monologue was great: “Ladies and gentlemen, your first feature film will not be given to you. Take it. Take it from the universe. Process over product. If you create a process with people you respect, the product becomes a bonus. And make movies that matter, that you care about. You're spending money, days, time, people, missing people – don't do that for gimmicks and bullshit. If you're gonna use people, give them something to hold onto. Whether you're political or not, you're saying something. Make something that matters, please.”

A panel on transmedia (spreading a storytelling experience across multiple media platforms, such as those online) featured Lance Weiler (who's become known for this type of work) and Ingrid Kopp from the filmmaking organization Shooting People. Weiler was typically evangelical on the subject (“This is like the silent era of filmmaking, where we are starting to realize what we can do”), while Kopp pointed out the possibilities for documentary work. Another transmedia artist on the panel, Braden King, said “This is an exciting time. If there's parts of your project that don't fit traditional film narrative structure, this is a new way to organize your thoughts.” The panelists cited buildingstoryworlds.com and digitalbootcamp.wikispaces.com as online resources on this topic.

The final panel of the day had the title “The Hot Button: Is Indie Filmmaking a Career?” One of the panelists, indie producer Ted Hope, amusingly contradicted his surname by asserting that having a career in indie film was no longer realistic due to increasing competition, falling budgets, and the rising cost of living. He said you now have to be independently wealthy to be able to pursue the unpaid internships necessary to break into the industry. Another panelist, Mynette Louie, felt it was still possible; she herself had saved up money so that she could spend a year trying to break into the industry, and ended up in a full time job at the Hawaii film commission, where she earned enough money to be able to then spend another year looking for other opportunities. She admitted that a recent DIY self-distribution experience was very difficult and that she didn't want to do it again.

Hope conceded that we currently are in “very exciting times and scary times” due to the rise of new digital platforms but the relatively low 5- to 6-figure offers that filmmakers are getting, which make it difficult to justify making films on larger budgets.

The moderator asserted that making a project can get you job as a lobbyist or professor – “you make money for something next to the thing” - which sounded a bit parasitic to my ears. It's common for American liberals to lament the lack of funding for the arts, so it was refreshing when a Danish woman in the audience said that she respected the American system and asked whether the US film industry would be the same if producers were paid a lot whether they made films a lot. Hope, responding to this, admitted that in societies where art is subsidized, there are governing boards and bureaucracies who only support people like themselves.

When asked for advice during the Q&A, Louie said to manage your time well and make sure you have enough staff to help you. Hope said to gather information on the community that builds around your film, and not to lose touch with them. Hope also recommended not having a script over 100 pages, and said he had no patience for spelling errors or lack of proper format. He said you should be able to think of transmedia marketing hooks for your movie, even if some of your ideas are nonsense.

NEXT TIME: panels on self-promotion and distribution, plus a panel about the release of Red State!

Film snobbery in the digital age

“When I first came out here [to Hollywood], in the late '60s, I met guys like Richard Brooks and Billy Wilder who … would invariably talk about what shit was being produced then. I thought, These guys who made films that I thought were astounding, are totally out of it today. How can this happen? … Now … I feel like Wilder and Brooks, an old nag. And, like them in the early '70s, I think that most of the films being made in this country today are garbage.”
--William Friedkin, 1996

“It’s communication. I’m all about the conversation. It’s not about filmmaking … I’m not a filmmaker, I’m some weird [bleep] hybrid of something. And right now, film isn’t even the primary conversation for me. For me, I’m way more interested in being on stage, or [podcasting]. And film is like, as much as I love it, it’s just one way to talk to the audience.”
--Kevin Smith, 2010

The Smith quote is from an interview I'll mention later. The Friedkin quote is pulled from page 414 of Peter Biskind's book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, a history of the wild adventures of the 1970s generation of maverick Hollywood directors.

Flipping through Biskind's book to search for that half-remembered Friedkin quote caused me to become transported back to the New Hollywood era. OK, I wasn't really around for that stuff at the time, but 1970s filmmaking was still very potent, and its directors still considered role models, when I was a film student in the 1990s.

The general attitude then was that that the 70s was the last time movies were actually good, and that anyone who wanted to make real movies should look back to that time for inspiration. A major reason why Miramax films such as Pulp Fiction were so celebrated in their day was precisely because they seemed like a throwback to the rawness, innovation and edginess of that earlier time, before movies became soulless and formulaic.

But here's the catch: What a control-freak grownup finds soulless and formulaic, an adventurous young person might find supercool and awesome. “The 1970s were better” version of film history almost always ends by demonizing Star Wars in particular, and genre filmmaking in general, without regard for the fact that the generation after them is loyal to those films above all others.

What I loved about the sci-fi and fantasy films of the 70s/80s was that they put original, never-before-seen worlds and visions onscreen. The films of George Lucas, Ridley Scott, Terry Gilliam, James Cameron, Jim Henson, Tim Burton, David Cronenberg, John Carpenter, Sam Raimi and others showed that 70s/80s genre filmmaking was no less creative, no less “auteurist”, than the dramas of the 60s/70s.

In turn, big-budget fantasy films and action movies seemed to get toppled in the 1990s, with the rise of independent film as we know it today. You could feel a real generational shift happening as grunge and rap took hold. There was a growing dissatisfaction with regular Hollywood product, and a growing demand for films that were edgy and different and personal. But indie films – and dramas in general – have since lost the “it” factor, now that fanboy-friendly remakes and franchises have taken over.

Obviously, every generation eventually hits the age where its values are no longer a heroic challenge to the old guys, but a stuffy status quo being threatened by the young guys. Once that happens to you, it's time to make a course correction if you want to survive.


I've started thinking about all this for several reasons. As I ponder where to send Saberfrog next, I am forced to evaluate what I hope to gain by giving the film more exposure. The cultural landscape has changed multiple times since I first fell in love with filmmaking as a kid, and as George Santayana put it, “A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim.” The recent return of Tron has also been pause for thought, but I'll get to that soon. (I've been working on this post since before it came out.)

Re-reading the anecdotes in Biskind's book reminded me just how passionate people used to be about filmmaking and film-viewing. There was something tactile and sensual about the whole process – carrying bulky film equipment to far-flung locations, like heroic explorers of a new continent … threading and splicing celluloid in an editing room, grease pencil ever ready to mark an important frame … and sitting in a darkened screening room, as cinematic dreams unspooled on a clackety projector.

It was still like that when I was a student. But several things have happened since then.

Films have become more accessible, if not downright disposable. There are a gazillion channels showing movies, and the few that aren't easily available on DVD can probably be pirated somewhere off the Internet. Also, technology has made it easier to produce footage and share it with other people. There's just not the reverence for the moving image that there was even ten years ago, let alone twenty or thirty.

Equally important is the fact that other art forms have caught up with cinema. Television, comic books and video games were each considered junky time-wasters once upon a time, but in recent decades they've made massive leaps forward in form and content. They also allow fuller explorations of a fictional world, and the characters who populate it, with greater length and depth than a single film could, often on lower budgets that allow for more risk-taking.

In trying to catch up with newer trends in indie film, I've attended workshops such as Lance Weiler's DIY Days and Jon Reiss' Think Outside The Box Office, and a common buzzword that keeps coming up is “transmedia”. This basically means extending a property and its story across multiple platforms, so that the world of your film continues into other media such as the Internet, computer games, and phone apps.

There's already a word for this. That word is “franchise”.

Star Wars is transmedia. There are the movies, which are fine. But over the last 33-plus years there have also been novels, action figures and games, all of which let the consumer explore particular aspects of the Star Wars universe in greater detail.

Monty Python is transmedia. Beyond the TV series, you had books, films, albums and stage shows, each of which had material not featured on the show, and each of which played with their chosen medium as mischievously as the TV sketches – for example, the Matching Tie and Hankerchief album was an LP with not two, but three sides; and the Big Red Book actually had a blue cover.

Lord of the Rings and Dune, even in their original book forms, were transmedia. You had the main stories, but you also had maps and glossaries – which you could consult at any point during the main story, to understand their created worlds more fully.

Increasingly, Hollywood films are no longer works of art in their own right, but are the extension of a brand that generated its loyalty elsewhere, just as films get converted into TV shows or video games. All these different media are interconnected now, and as much as the film purist in me might want to complain, this isn't changing any time soon.

Besides, I'm not really one to talk. I went to the midnight opening of Tron: Legacy, rather than waiting for a more convenient time to see it in the theater (let alone wait for home video), because of the strength of my life-long loyalty to Tron as a brand. While the new film is clearly designed to stand on its own, many aspects of the new movie – including its very existence – will be more meaningful to those of us with prior knowledge of the world, characters, themes and backstory.

Which made me think a little more about the whole “death of film criticism” issue that's been such a hot topic among film buffs in the last couple years. Many people (including film critics, natch) lament the decline of serious intellectual debate regarding films, and the decline in appreciation of film as a serious art form. An alternate view, however, was summed up well by Kevin Smith in an IndieWire interview back in July:

“I used to read [reviews] to see if anybody got it … And back in the day that was the only way you could know, because there was no [bleep] internet. You know, you could see people at a screening and they would tell you how much the movie meant to them or what it did for them and stuff. But, generally all you had to go by was the critics … Then into that world was introduced the Internet and suddenly everybody can give you their opinion on movies, which is what I was always chiefly interested in. So, I’m getting opinions from not just the same 100 people … I don’t dislike critics, I’m just like, why are these 100 people any more valid than the people that, I don’t know, the 1.7 million on Twitter, or whatever it is.”

For Smith, then, connecting with audiences who “got” his movies is more important than impressing cultural gatekeepers. Regular readers of my blog (all four of you) will have heard me complain about all the remakes and adaptations, and also about the fan types who don't care whether a film is good or not unless it's faithful to the original material. But seeing Tron: Legacy made me appreciate two things more deeply:

1) When it's something you're a fan of, you have different priorities than someone who's only judging it as a stand-alone movie.

2) Critics know about films (especially dramas) and are purist about film as a separate art form with its own history; they don't necessarily know much about other art forms, and thus don't always have the most useful insight when a film is based on something with a larger history.

The original Tron, for me, was a gateway to the life and career I'm in now. I first saw the film as a kid, thinking it would be about arcade games, and it turned out to be an introduction to the then-new world of computers. Like William Gibson's Neuromancer, it was an analog production that showed the potential of a digital future. So when I glance at Rotten Tomatoes and see reviews from critics who not only disliked the new movie, but thought the original Tron was a silly flop that never merited a sequel anyway, I thought, They don't get it. It seems an obvious thing to say, but Tron: Legacy wasn't made for fans of Citizen Kane or Casablanca; it was made for fans of the original Tron, and fans of computers and digital imagery.

Even the smarter critics are running aground in their failure to recognize the evolving relationship between film and other art forms. Roger Ebert's reluctance to consider video games an art form has received scorn even from his dedicated fans, to point where he finally recanted; and his negative review of Tyler Perry's debut feature, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, provoked angry responses from Perry fans scolding him for his unfamiliarity with Perry's earlier theater work. (The latter example suggests that these cross-media disputes don't solely affect the geek community.)

It's an almost deadening cliché to point out that we're living in a digital age, and that our lives and our culture are being changed by Facebook and Twitter, by YouTube and Netflix, by Google and Wikipedia, by the iPad and the Kindle. Yet certain nostalgic attitudes die hard, even though some of these attitudes – if we stop to think about it – have perhaps outlived their usefulness.

Glancing through Biskind's book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls was a melancholy experience, because it chronicles a romantic attitude towards film – and filmmakers – that is just plain gone. Yet two things need to be said to put the freewheeling 70s film counterculture in perspective. One is that – at least by Biskind's account, and judging by what they say about each other in the book – these guys were assholes. As enthralling as their war stories are, most of the directors covered by Biskind come off as out-of-control egomaniacs who dug their own graves, then tried to blame others for their own demise.

The other thing is that many of the issues these guys fought for are simply outdated. Biskind's introduction praises these artists for producing “work that was character- rather than plot-driven, that defied traditional narrative conventions, that challenged the tyranny of technical correctness, that broke the taboos of language and behavior, that dared to end unhappily.” Admittedly Biskind's book is itself over a decade old now, but all of these qualities are quite commonplace in the storytelling media of today. And “technical correctness”, far from being a “tyranny”, is not only craved but demanded by the film and media buffs of today, and is also within reach of any consumer- or prosumer-level media maker willing to put in the effort to learn how to use the tools.


I get the sense that, when it comes to art – in any format – there are two broad schools of thought. One is that art must be “real” – that it should be truthful to real emotions and real experiences. The other is that art is artifice – it is imaginative and imaginary, an escape from humdrum reality.

Supporters of the former always criticize the latter, on the grounds that stories which amuse or distract us are a brainwashing diversion from the real world. But the core assumption there is that “real” always means grim, angst-ridden or defeated … the assumption being that anything positive, optimistic or constructive is always a lie.

But I'm a lifelong science fiction fan, and have come to learn the SF philosophy from authors' essays and filmmakers' interviews. I'm far more drawn to the idea of art and storytelling as a venue where you can create something better, promote new possibilities, envision things that haven't happened yet, propose better models for how things could be.

The existence of computers strikes at the very heart of this debate. Many people condemn anything digital as a bad thing, on the grounds that computers and virtual worlds aren't “real”, and are highly reluctant to understand how much power these new tools give to people who are willing to embrace them.

This contrast between introversion and misery on the one hand, versus extroversion and confidence and willingness to make something happen, is probably the most important divide in our culture, and people who embrace modern media are firmly in the latter camp.

While I was in college, I was given the assignment of reading the Beckett play Waiting for Godot for a liberal-arts class in the history of theater. At the same time, I happened to be reading – for pleasure – Medea: Harlan's World, an odd book that resulted from SF author Harlan Ellison inviting several of his fellow writers (with some input from a seminar audience) to collaboratively create an alien world and write some short stories set within it. The book consists of a transcript of a panel where the authors thrashed out their ideas, followed by individual treatises on various aspects of the invented world, and finally the short stories (a couple of them quite moving) written by individual authors.

I couldn't help but notice the contrast. Beckett's protagonists were passive, helpless victims who couldn't even work out what day it was. Ellison and his colleagues, on the other hand, were pooling their imagination, intelligence and cleverness to create something that wouldn't have existed if they hadn't worked to make it so. Medea: Harlan's World, though forgotten today, was a completely unique kind of book, and perhaps just as mold-breaking as Godot but for completely different reasons that I found far more inspiring. By working together to create stories in a shared world, Ellison and his writers were creating – to all intents and purposes – a little mini-franchise.

However, there still have to be people with the vision to create a franchise in the first place, not just perpetuate one created by someone else. I do still believe in creating original work, and the only way to do that is by having a passion.

That passion is easier to tap into when you're young, and haven't been weighted down by disappointments and setbacks. It gets harder with age; you have to resist the temptation to play it safe, and continue to be as determined and adventurous. Filmmaking is a drug. And as Paul Schrader says in Biskind's book, “In your forties, you really have to want to be a drug user, because it's so hard to keep the hours.”

So why do it? Because you must. Not for fortune or fame, but because you have a vision you believe in. It's important to learn from your experiences, but also to keep your youthful vision and not let experience deaden you or trap you in the past.

“I had the confidence of ignorance. Not knowing anything about it, there was no basis for fear. In other words, if you're walking along the edge of a cliff and you don't know it's the edge of a cliff, you have perfect confidence. And I didn't discover the cliff in the theater or in films until after I'd been in it for a while.
“Then you have to be careful not to listen to anybody. You have to remember your old ignorance and ask for the impossible with the same cheerfulness that you did when you didn't know what you were talking about.”
--Orson Welles